Manitoba Provincial Parks has published their geocaching policy and officially welcomes Geocachers to the parks. The full policy is available from Manitoba Parks : http://www.gov.mb.ca/conservation/parks/recreation/ssf/geocach/info.html. Some things to note, you must apply to hide a cache in a Provincial Park, the application form is online at the above site. In addition, physical caches are not allowed in wilderness and heritage land use categories.

This geocaching policy for Manitoba Provincial Parks presents quite a bit of new information that needs to be digested. Most of the detailed information that will be needed to decide whether or not to make the effort to hide a new cache in a Park is contained in the “System Plan for Manitoba’s Provincial Parks” document. Unfortunately the link to that document from the MB Park’s Geocaching page does not work. I think the link should take you here:

This System Plan document has the detail for all MB Parks. It includes aerial photographs with superimposed boundaries of each park, including all the Land Use Categories that each Park is divided into. The document’s appendices contain tables listing each park’s classification and what Land Use Categories each one contains. The appendices are in Section 5 of the document. Unfortunately, the link to Section 5 has a glitch in it too. If you click on “Sec”, you will go nowhere. Click on “tion 5” to get to the appendices.

Each of the 81 MB Parks as a whole falls into one of 4 classifications: Wilderness Park, Natural Park, Heritage Park or Recreation Park. (There are also 13 Park Reserves for potential future Parks.)

All of the land within the Parks falls into one of 6 Land Use Categories: B – Backcountry, H – Heritage, RD – Recreational Development, RM – Resource Management, W - Wilderness or A – Access.

Here are 3 examples of my own caches:

My “Mantario Lake” cache is in Whiteshell Park which is a Natural Park. However it is in a location that has a Wilderness Land Use Category. So it would not be allowed. (burchil has kindly offered to remove it for me)

My “Elk Island Splash” cache is in Elk Island Park which is a Natural Park. That whole park is Backcountry Land Use Category. So that cache would be permitted assuming all other stipulations are met.

My “Viking Plunder” multi-cache is in Hecla/Grindstone Park which is a Natural Park. All of the clues to find it are “virtual” and are located in Heritage Land Use Category. But the final physical cache is in Recreational Development Land Use Category. So that cache would be permitted assuming all other stipulations are met.

I am reviewing all of my Provincial Park caches with these rules in mind and intend to comply with them.

I think there is some room for adjustment for each cache situation as many of the areas are painted with broad strokes and not totally representative of the entire area. For example I have a cache located in a park which is entirely classified as heritage. The park however contains two parking areas, a workshop, washrooms and other modern buildings, paved trails, picnic shelters and tables.

On July 24th we were in Birds Hill Park launching our "Gneevil was here at 7 a.m." in conjunction with the GeoVenture event at the group use area. Today, some 22 days later since we submitted our Provincial Park online application our cache has been denied as it did not meet the guidelines. We absolutely respect this decision, however, it does not leave us time to make changes, submit another online application and get it to geocaching.com for publishing.

We know GeoVenture 2010 will be awesome/amazing but unfortunately we will not be able to attend. We were hopeful Gneevil would attend in our absence but that won't be happening either.

Do you need one of us to pick up your cache for you? Email me if you do and I'll pop it into my trunk and give it to you at our next meeting._________________"So do they sometimes hide caches in dog poo like this?" "No, that's real poo. You might want to put that down."

Thanks for the offer glacier_ice. We are heading out there tomorrow early evening to pick it up. It was a 2 stage multi with a 4.5 difficulty 1.5 terrain. It is the first stage that is at issue and the difficulty is for the final. Wouldn't want the first stage picked up without the final. The Park may have already removed the first stage anyways. Guess we will find out tomorrow. A ton of work went into it so we hope if the Park has removed the first stage that we will be able to retrieve it from someone/somewhere.

Maybe we will find another home for it but it won't be in another Provincial Park.

So are lots of the Manitoba Parks denying geocaches now? I placed a note for my friend on a different page noting her struggles. Have many cachers run into this now? Going to the work of getting co-ords, hiding them and then finding them not approved is a huge disappointment. I maintain then the Parks themselves should hide the caches for us to find on their trails...and maintain them. Geocaching is here to stay.

I just had one denied because it was just a short way down a well worn deer trail and not near a recognized trail. Still waiting for another to be approved and I know Turdle's waiting even longer.

I think it's still too early to tell how things will pan out over time as we and they get used to the process._________________"So do they sometimes hide caches in dog poo like this?" "No, that's real poo. You might want to put that down."

A follow up to this. Dani will be meeting soon with the Parks people. It appears that some rules were changed without us being notified of those changes._________________"So do they sometimes hide caches in dog poo like this?" "No, that's real poo. You might want to put that down."

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